The lab will open its doors in january 2019​psychology departmentjupiter life sciences initiative ​florida atlantic university​jupiter, fl

"All the intellectual value for us of a state of mind depends on our after-memory of it" William James

Key questions

​ One of the most sophisticated functions of the mammalian brain is the ability to infer further knowledge from information stored in memory. This ability relies on the encoding of memory traces, but also on their retrieval and manipulation within neural networks in the forebrain, and across behavioral states (wakefulness and sleep). How do stored memory traces support flexible learning and generalization? How are they accessed to respond optimally to environmental demands? How do we generate new insights from what we already know? Mechanistically, these functions are implemented by the careful coordination of activity in ensembles of cells that form functional networks spanning multiple brain regions.

And a key target​ ​ The limbic thalamus is a critical hub directly connected to major cognitive areas, like the medial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and striatum, and also to regulatory regions like the hypothalamus, septum and state-related brainstem areas. Cells in the limbic thalamus could then effectively serve as functional executives for cognitive function and regulate the flow of information in the forebrain as a function of internal states (emotion, sleep). Our goal is to figure out how the interactions between the functional networks of the limbic thalamus underlie the retrieval and manipulation of episodic memory that serves cognitive function (inference, problem solving, flexible memory consolidation).​